Maria Sharapova fails with double faults error

By Oliver Brown

12:01AM BST 27 Jun 2008

You could have heard the screams in the next postal district. When Maria Sharapova is in trouble she tends to lose little of her glacial poise but all of her volume control, articulating her frustrations with a decibel level more suited to Heathrow airport than the hushed amphitheatre of Court No 1.

Last night the hush was one of sheer incredulity at the raggedness of the Russian's display - in a hail of double faults and flunked forehands, she lost emphatically to her far less starry compatriot, Alla Kudryavtseva, and scuttled off the grass as fast as her gold-embossed shoes could carry her.

Sharapova paraded on to court in the tuxedo jacket she has had tailored for the tournament but here her fashion conundrums ended; she will, after all, be nowhere near the champions' ball. Instead Kudryavtseva, who must have been feeling thoroughly upstaged in her tracksuit, chose the moment of her 6-2, 6-4 victory to offer a wonderfully catty put-down. "It's very pleasant to beat Maria," she said. And why would that be? "Well, I don't like her outfit."

A season that began so auspiciously for Sharapova, with her triumph at the Australian Open, is now in danger of unravelling around her. Her agent Max Eisenbud, who sat pensively alongside her father Yuri throughout, does not have to worry unduly - his client will preserve her status the highest-earning sportswoman on earth - but she is suffering some serious dents in her form, and popularity. Booed off court for perceived stroppiness in her French Open quarter-final defeat to Dinara Safina, there was hardly the sense at Wimbledon, at least judging by the ovation accorded to Kudryavtseva, that her passing was mourned much either.

But then sometimes Sharapova does herself few favours, at least at her Press conferences.

Replacing the tuxedo with a shapeless sweater, she turned the sarcasm dial up sharply as she was asked where she went from here, whether this was the worst day of her life, that kind of thing. Asking her to emote, though, is rather like asking Andy Roddick to go easy on the wisecracks. It never works, as one hapless inquisitor found upon asking if she was "hurting". She snapped back: "What do you think?"

Part of a problem like Maria is the subjective first impressions. She and Kudryavtseva might be more than 150 places apart in the world rankings, and even further divorced in terms of earnings, but there are certain similarities. Both of them live and train in Florida, and yet where the cadence of Kudryavtseva's English remains exotically Russian, Sharapova delivers all her answers in that faintly irritating mid-Atlantic twang. The world No?2 plays the part of the sultry fashionista to perfection - and yesterday the catwalk seemed to be where she had left her tennis.

At times Sharapova's play was inexplicably dreadful: as she toiled to impose herself on the first set, she served three double faults in the first game in which she was broken, and repeatedly snatched at routine passing shots. But perhaps we had been too quick to dismiss Kudryavtseva - a peripheral player on the women's tour all year, but with some impressive form at Wimbledon. On her debut last year she had been two points away from beating eventual champion Venus Williams before losing 7-5 in the final set. In that context, her expectations were very different.

"I think what helped was last year's match with Williams," she explained. "I was so close to winning and then just played a little too passive in the end. Here there was no way I was going to do the same mistake again, so I went for my shots." Sharapova, outgunned, merely went home. She had defended criticisms of her casual preparations for this year's Wimbledon by saying she wanted more time off. Last night a familiar, but powerful lesson resonated for her: be careful what you wish for.